Today the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld criminal charges against John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, meaning the case against them related to their work for former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay’s political action committee will proceed at the trial court level.
state agencies
Posted in
State Government
Texas Sees Red
The Port of Houston Authority is poised to make the Lone Star State the top U.S. trade partner with communist Cuba after gaining permission for its container vessels to sail there.
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: Hodge Sentenced to a Year in Prison
A U.S. district judge has sentenced embattled former state Rep. Terri Hodge to a year in prison in a Dallas City Hall corruption scandal that has already netted several other convictions.
Posted in
Public Education
Grade Stagflation
Hundreds of school districts can continue giving failing students inflated grades, after a Travis County Civil Court judge declined to rule in a lawsuit challenging the state’s interpretation of a new law mandating “honest grades.”
Posted in
Demographics
Smaller is Better
In a new statewide ranking of public schools that we published yesterday, the Dallas Independent School District boasts seven of the top 25 high schools but also 18 in the bottom quartile. Not surprisingly, the best ones have a small student population, while the worst ones are megacampuses — an example of a larger trend in school rankings data.
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State Government
TribBlog: Traffic Surcharges Attacked
Criminal justice advocates today told the Texas Public Safety Commission that their proposal to fix the broken Driver Responsibility Program fell far short of the comprehensive approach needed to help more than 1.2 million Texans who have lost their licenses because of the program’s steep surcharges.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
Data App: 5,800+ Schools Ranked
We’ve built a searchable database of public school rankings based on data collected by the Houston-based nonprofit Children At Risk. In contrast to the Texas Education Agency’s “ratings,” which rely almost entirely on the percentage of students passing the TAKS test, the rankings blend 12 different measures for elementary schools, 10 for middle schools and 14 for high schools — including TAKS results, ACT and SAT scores, AP exams, attendance rates, graduation rates and the percentage of economically disadvantaged students on every campus. How does your school stack up?
Posted in
Criminal Justice
The Big Stall
Since his appointment, the alternately amiable and peevish, typically cowboy-boot-shod chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission has comported himself as a virtuoso of the bureaucratic dawdle. With the commission’s investigation of the now-notorious Cameron Todd Willingham case “still in its infancy,” John Bradley has this to say about when it might conclude its review: “However long it takes, that’s however long it takes.”
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State Government
TribBlog: More Time for Willingham
Forensic Science Commission says consideration of Willingham case “still in its infancy.”
Posted in
State Government
TribBlog: 13 Months of Sunset
For a certain kind of animal — i.e., the Policy Wonk — this is a gift: Sunset reports on insurance and utility regulators and on the capital city’s transportation authority hit the internet this morning.
